I hear you, but you have to understand that we had to wait for the marriage licence because I was previously married and divorced in Michigan, and since it seems that Ontario and Michigan don't really speak to each other, getting a lawyer to say it's all good, and then having Thunder Bay say 'good enough for us' was basically our option at that point. Had I been unmarried, we wouldn't have had to go through all that malarkey.
I'm going to assume the reason why they do all this is to try and protect, or warn the Ontario spouse that they have no way of verifying for themselves the legitimacy of that divorce as it happened outside of Canadian jurisdiction. Makes me wonder if it's the same way or not if the divorce were to have happened anywhere else in Canada except for Ontario. Does Ontario talk to the other provinces? They apparently don't talk to any of the US states. (except for some driver's licence swap agreement - and I still went and got a copy of my driving record anyway!)
But yeah. It's quite an absurd process from our point of view. Meanwhile, a 'state sponsored pre-nup' sounds really strange to me from where I'm sitting, but I bet the reason why Quebec does it that way is so they don't have to deal with so many drawn out divorce fights over property issues. Just have 'the argument' out of the way before the marriage. Actually, it doesn't sound like a bad idea at all.
As for waiting for the marriage to be registered in Ontario before we could get our certs, I did not have to go through that malarkey in my first marriage. I think that certificate came in the mail after about ten days or so. As for Ontario, there's probably only one place for vital records to go to get registered, or so I would imagine. In Michigan, there is one for each county, so there's 83 county clerk offices altogether.
These are the only things I can think of as to why things like this in Ontario are so slow. But the next time I need a marriage cert from Ontario, it should be pretty quick.
AmericaninQuebec said:
Goodness Ontario takes a long time for marriage licenses and certificates. We decided to get married exactly 4 weeks before we did it here in Quebec. We saw the notary about it a few days later, just in time for her to publish the announcement in the local papers (required by law). We didn't have to do any medical exams, just sign off on papers stating that we were never previously married, etc. and pick a marriage scheme (when you marry in QC they want you to decide upfront how assets will be divided if you ever divorce, basically they force you to consider a state approved pre-nup). We paid a few dollars extra to get our marriage certificate right away, so we had it about 10 days after the ceremony, otherwise I think it takes up to 4 weeks here.
Why in the world does Ontario make people wait 2 mths for a marriage license and then another two months to register it? Seems positively absurd.
